When I was a kid, I really liked Disney’s Uncle Scrooge comic books, and it struck me that they contained a lot of the same material fringe history material that I eventually would read about in ancient astronaut and ancient mystery books. Scrooge McDuck, for example, went in search of King Solomon’s mines and the Minotaur’s Labyrinth, the philosopher’s stone and the lost continent of Atlantis. These stories, first published in the early 1950s, drew on the pulp fiction of the 1930s and 1940s (hence their Atlanaeans evolved into fish-people), and form another offshoot of the same pulp fiction/weird fiction complex that gave rise to UFOs, ancient astronauts, and other pseudoscientific approaches to history. The comic stories, frequently reprinted down to the present, also formed the basis for the Indiana Jones-style adventures of the animated Duck Tales series.

I obtained copies of some of the oldest Uncle Scrooge comics, and they contained a number of stories that are no longer reprinted, mostly because they’re really racist. I was struck, though, by a scene that occurred in Uncle Scrooge #29, in the story “The Island in the Sky,” from March-May 1960. In that adventure Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and the kids Huey, Dewey, and Louie travel by rocket to the asteroid belt in order to find a new hiding place for Scrooge’s three cubic acres of cash. They thought they found an uninhabited rock, only to discover that it was filled with “primitive” Indians.

Take a look at what happens next:

It’s pretty much the ancient astronaut theory in a nutshell. What’s more, it’s almost identical to the thought experiment that Erich von Däniken asked readers to imagine in the second chapter of Chariots of the Gods in 1968. There, he asked readers to consider Earth men rocketing to another planet and landing before a primitive race:

Our space travellers see beings making stone tools; they see them hunting and killing game with throwing spears; flocks of sheep and goats are grazing on the steppe; primitive potters are making simple household utensils. A strange sight to greet our astronauts!

But what do the primitive beings on this planet think about the monstrosity that has just landed there and the figures that climbed out of it? Let us not forget that we too were semi-savages 8,000 years ago. So it is not surprising when the semi-savages who experience this event bury their faces in the ground and dare not raise their eyes. Until this day they have worshipped the sun and the moon. And now something earthshaking has happened: the gods have come down from heaven! […] Undoubtedly our astronauts must seem like almighty gods to these primitive people!

There is no question of direct transmission. These are not the only examples of the theme. For instance, The Twilight Zone episode S03E28 “The Little People” from March 30, 1962 similarly featured Earth astronauts being taken for gods by the tiny inhabitants of an alien world. Predating all of these is the 1956 clunker The Mole People, in which American archaeologists entering the Hollow Earth find a remnant Sumerian civilization and convince the king that that they are divine beings sent by Ishtar. (And what a dud that film is! It’s half a century’s worth of fringe history, from Hollow Earth theories to Panbabylonism, distilled into 77 crappy minutes.) Undoubtedly, there are many other examples.

What is interesting, though, is that the Uncle Scrooge version makes quite plain (though somewhat incorrectly) the direct inspiration for assuming that Native people would mistake space travelers for deities: the myth, recorded by Spanish missionaries, that the Native peoples of Mexico mistook the Conquistadors for their returning white gods. This is the same myth that, in another form, informed the diffusionist claim that white men had long ago colonized the Americas and given the continent its civilization, Christianity, and/or Templar-Freemason secrets. That story was invented in the 1530s and 1540s by the first generation of Spanish historians of the New World. It was based on a fake speech Cortés assigned to Montezuma, and expanded upon by Bernardino de Sahagún and the Franciscan historians.

While that may have been the origin point for the modern trope, it is not the starting point for the story. The Spanish missionaries came to the New World steeped in the Bible and therefore expected that in the New World they would find echoes of the Old. They already believed themselves to be the equivalent of the Apostles—writers like Diego Durán and Toribio de Benavente believed St. Thomas or another Apostle visited Mexico and Peru 1500 years earlier—and they imagined themselves to be treated like them. Therefore, it is no surprise that they cast the arrival of the Catholic Spanish in terms familiar from Acts 14:

11 Now when the people saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices, saying in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” 12 And Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. 13 Then the priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of their city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, intending to sacrifice with the multitudes. 14 But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard this, they tore their clothes and ran in among the multitude, crying out 15 and saying, “Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men…”

We could keep going back further, to the Euhemerists of ancient Greece, who thought that the gods were old kings whose memories had been deified.

In all of these cases, however, the literary purpose of such narratives is clear: They paint the Natives as primitive, naïve, credulous, and a little stupid. They also serve to glorify the conquerors as the opposite. The ancient astronaut theory therefore has the unintended consequence of making all humans look stupid, which is perhaps why so many modifications of it attempt to set aside a subset of humans, typically elite white males, who understand the truth and actively conspire with the aliens while everyone else stumbles about in blindness.

"which is perhaps why so many modifications of it attempt to set aside a subset of humans, typically elite white males, who understand the truth and actively conspire with the aliens while everyone else stumbles about in blindness."

Interesting description, as this is the reverse of Lovecraft. In his fiction, it's the primitives who conspire with the aliens while the white elites stumble about blindly.

It's rather interesting that even as far back as Pauwels and Bergier we see discomfort with Lovecraft's idea that Western people are out of touch with the alien Other. They, after all, assigned Hitler the role of intermediary to the aliens!

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A C

8/30/2016 12:57:07 pm

"I'll be Doggoned!"

Is that a common Donald Duck phrase?

Odd coincidence or was Robert Temple really taking the piss?

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DaveR

8/30/2016 04:03:22 pm

I remember Donald Duck saying that in Disney cartoons.

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Day Late and Dollar Short

8/30/2016 07:34:56 pm

"Duck tales oo-woo-oo"

Launchpad Mcquack is a great band name. I apologize for being a millennial.

E.P. Grondine

8/30/2016 01:11:03 pm

Hi Jason -

Fiction writers have been mining theosophist bullshit for plot material for a long time.

Consider the Indiana Jones series, or most of Clive Cussler's fiction books. Perhaps why it appeals both to you and to so many others is that the result is entertaining.

But then, for most people, fiction is nearly always more entertaining than real life, or history,

Adiobe an convert the pdf's of the french translations of Al Idirisi's work into text, which you could run through one of the online machine translators. Hand correct the result, cut and paste in graphics of the Arabic text fragments, and there you go.

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E.P. Grondine

8/31/2016 10:12:35 am

Hi Jason -

The theosophist bull shit also reflects the worst of the racism and prejudices of the times in which it was first concocted. Read my piece on Kieninger

.

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V

9/1/2016 02:27:23 pm

It's not precisely unexpected; speaking as someone who writes a very great deal (not published, just write A LOT), and given the research I have done int to the processes of writing fiction, I have to say that you will not find much that fiction writers DON'T mine for plot material.

Gotta say, though, "most people" are missing out. History is the most awesome story ever told, and if only they had any IDEA how much real history is mined for their fiction, they'd be shocked.

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Kal

8/30/2016 01:40:10 pm

Scrooge McDuck and Duck Tales are not done by the same people, but have very similar ideas. I met the Scrooge artist and he had a sign at his table that read, 'I'm not the Duck Tales animator'. 2015 convention.

Indiana Jones is directly influenced by the serial Scrooge comics.

Von Danican might be influenced also by Star Trek, 1966- which would have episodes where the crew might get mistaken for gods, or some machine was, and the crew had to stop them. They also visited a primitive native planet a few times.

Twilight Zone and Outer Limits and many fantasy shows went there also.

Some of it stemmed from the era of the Western, which was ending and changing into the era of fantasy.

You could do a whole story on how the culture shifted as the result of radio programs and comics going to TV and how that changed perceptions.

1950s era TV and serials were fascinating for being both cold war parable and fear of the unknown parable in one.

The common people were afraid of the impact of television and were often making shows about how TV would take over your mind. It was pretty silly.

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DaveR

8/30/2016 04:07:36 pm

They did that in Star Trek Into Darkness where the Enterprise rises from the ocean and the primitive inhabitants bow down like they're praying as one of them draws an outline of the ship with a stick. They also drop their sacred scroll they were previously bowing to that Kirk stole.

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TheBigMike

8/31/2016 02:15:38 pm

There was an episode of Star Trek The Original Series that very literally encapsulated everything Ancient Aliens. The Enterprise crew met Apollo, the Greek god. He was an alien with tremendous powers and he and his people had visited earth in the distant past and set themselves up as gods. They lived as gods being worshiped until mankind just stopped worshiping. Then they got bored and left.

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DaveR

8/31/2016 03:17:39 pm

It's a common theme in Science Fiction.

Ph

8/30/2016 03:25:51 pm

Isn't that also a common theme of wishful thinking of everyone that goes to war? The enemy surrendering without a fight.

Mankind has not evolved enough for that too be common.
We are destined to make war, as evident in the excuses we use for it.

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Epiméthée

8/30/2016 07:50:34 pm

I think it would be fair to name the artist, the great Carl Barks, who was responsible for the creation of Scrooge McDuck and made the stories about the philosophal stone (in which Scrooge find also the Labyrinth), Atlantis, and some really great tales about the Golden Fleece, Shangri-La, and other classical or fringe legends. Barks was really a great storyteller and an all-time great comics artist. The many ways he used to draw upon popular stories, classical mythologies and pulp are really Interesting.

His stories are easier to find in Europe, in French for example they are printing a complete edition of his work in 24(!) volumes. Alas, they lack the critical commentaries that should be pretty obvious, such as the one you made here Jason.

You could be also interrested in the work of Don Rosa, famous for "The Life and Time of Scrooge McDuck " also one of the all-time great comics artist. He followed the work of Barks and many of his stories used the same myths. The interesting point here is the use he made of some fringe theories about the Templar treasure or the Library of Alexandria. Don Rosa is really (and rightfully so) proud of his documentation. In the gorgeous French edition of his complete work, he explain how he tried to use verified facts to support his fiction and thought at time the Templar Treasure was real, only to learn afterward it was an Hoax. That's really a great insight into the creative process and how an honest creator can be fooled by the Fringes. I could send you a scan of the text, i think it's fair use.

In comics, i think one of the mots direct use of Von Däniken is in the work of Jack Kirby, particullary in Marvel "The Eternals" and Dc "Fourth World". They are really great pieces of popular fiction and are one of the places to look at to understand the way fringe ideas can be difused in the mind of young reader. And the y are great!

I'm currently away from m'y books but could give you the references as soon as i am back home.

Thank you for your work! I wait allready for the next post!

And please, excuse my auto correct and my French, english is only my third language and my phone is not used to it!

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TheBigMike

8/31/2016 02:33:05 pm

Just a note on Jack Kirby's work, specifically the Fourth World stuff... I wouldn't say they are tied to much to von Daniken. In the context of the story, the New Gods and the Forever People ARE gods, not aliens posing as gods. Apokolips and New Genesis are planets that exist on another plane, not just very far away.
A better example of a comic book franchise that epitomizes Ancient Alien theories is actually Thor. Stan Lee and jack Kirby developed the Asgardians as powerful aliens with technology that was so advanced that it seems magical.
I think, however, that giving credit to von Daniken for these ideas is a bit faulty, since Thor first appear in 1962. Other comments mention Star Trek and most of those stories, too, appeared before Chariots of the Gods. This entire article is about stories of a similar vein that happened before von Daniken came on the scene. Old Erich didn't do anything original, despite what many episodes of Ancient Aliens want you to believe. He just took old fiction stories and put the spin of non-fiction on them.

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Epiméthée

8/31/2016 07:12:30 pm

I think we could argue all day about the difference between physical gods from outer space and aliens posing as gods. My main point with the Fourth World is that Kirby clearly intended to create a modern spin on myths that use à lot of the same ideas that Ancient Aliens theories. There is in my opinion a continuum between Asgard, the Fourth World and the theories of Von Däniken. In the Eternals, published i think in 1976, you could also find the famous argument against sceptics that is retold every other Day and seem lifted from "chariots". Kirby admitted the spécial place of "the Eternals" as the moment he started to explicitly use what he believed in his stories and you could also find the same obsession in the Star child of his version of 2001: à Space odyssey.
I totally agree with your point about the lack of originality of Däniken. I should have made clear that my use of his name was an easy way to frame the theories he had propagated and not a mean to give him undue credit. Nonetheless, the fact that those ideas are all over Kirby's work, including his famous spin on "Lord of Light" from Zelazny, (which was also written before "Chariot" and play around the confusion between SF and Fantasy, between aliens and gods, to be short) make his work a sensible place to look at. In a way, the fact that his créations can be seen as mythical but draw upon glorious machinery is also an interesting echo of the fringe, where Aliens may be one day spiritual agents and the other day physical beings.

Alan Napier was excellent in the movie, but even a good performance can't save a movie that starts with a real-life professor giving the audience a lengthy lecture on the literary history of hollow earth theories.

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.